The Evolution of an Appendectomy, Volume 3

...The morphine took about an hour to fully take effect and then I was in much better spirits during my hospital stay. We were told that a CT scan would be the next step in determining whether the gallbladder was in fact causing the pain in my upper abdomen. Summer, Beata and I settled into the idea that our road trip plans were probably pretty much ruined, though we held out a glimmer of hope that maybe the CT scan would reveal nothing was wrong after all (typical whenever I have decided to finally go to a Doctor in my life) and that perhaps we could continue on, albeit delayed. 

I had to drink something so that my insides would glow properly for the CT scan. I don't know if it was Barium or what, but the cup said Barium, and I was on morphine so I went with it:

This nice lady arrived with a wheelchair to deliver me for the CT scan. First class service all the way. Nothing less for this fancy lady: 

At some point however, I began to wonder if I really truly need to be in the hospital...I mean after the morphine takes effect, let me tell ya...and p.s. you know how I initially refused the morphine? Here's a tip I received via text from Summer's RN sister Holland: "Kady. Rule # 1: Never refuse Morphine."

In addition to the Barium or whatever it was they had me drink, they injected me with two very scary looking vials of cloudy liquid, which I was warned would feel immediately warm, and the warm feeling would congregate in my crotch and would feel like I was peeing myself. This turned out to be all 100% true. That is exactly what it felt like, warm and weird and then a burning in my crotch. And a feeling like I was peeing myself. Anyway, other than that it wasn't bad. I'm very claustrophobic and was terrified of the idea of a "CT scan", imagining an MRI tube-like-machine, but this thing was no bigs...more like a big donut than a tube, and never even came near my face.

They immediately uploaded the images to a radiologist in Madison and after two hours, it was determined that my gallbladder looked totally normal. But he or she (I like to imagine it was a she, because this was a BRILLIANT call) didn't like the look of my appendix and ordered up two additional views of my innerds. Back to the wheelchair and back to the first class fancy lady service and back to the CT donut machine. Apparently said appendix had moved up into the upper part of my abdomen (this is rare, but it happens enough that it's called something like "lateralizing" or at least that's what I think I remember them saying) and that's why I didn't feel any pain in my lower right quadrant -- where appendicitis typically presents itself. Dr. Birkenstocks did a couple of push tests and lifted my right leg and exactly where he was pushing and lifting I felt excruciating pain. The new CT views confirmed it. Acute appendicitis it was. Get this though: acute appendicitis caused by an appendicolith, aka fecolith, aka fecalith, which I and the Doctor took to calling a "shit stone", because that's exactly what it is. Look it up.

And then I told the girls, "I KNEW this was gonna be shit-related."